The Lord will now list a catalogue of destruction. The list contains some cities with which we are familiar, and some which have only this single mention in the Book of Mormon. What appears to tie them together is some ability to be distinguished as “wicked.” The theme is the destruction of the wicked.
In addition to the description of physical reality, we must remember that this is also a typological reference to the destruction of the wicked in the last days. This is, after all, the Messiah who is come. This Messiah brings with him the essence of who he is, and he is the same Messiah who will come at the end of the world. It is therefore fitting that his coming should be presaged by the violence of nature, and the destruction, event he burning, of the wicked.
The first location that is listed is Zarahemla. Zarahemla has been the chief city of the Nephite hegemony since their arrival over two hundred years before this date. In spite of the centrality to Nephite government, it has recently been the location of great wickedness. Not too long ago the Gadiantons were in charge of the government. Even after their expulsion and a brief return to faithfulness, we may be certain that the major disruptions of the new secret combination among the judges that brought down the government did their deed in Zarahemla. The destruction of the government is our evidence that there were insufficient numbers of righteous people in Zarahemla to rescue the governmental process, as they had from earlier threats that we saw in the book of Alma.
The government of the Nephites was destroyed, and now the seat of that former government is also destroyed. The presentation of Zarahemla first comes because it symbolically represents the purging of the entire Nephite nation.
We will find that the city of Zarahemla is rebuilt, most likely at least twenty-five years from this point (see 4 Nephi 1: 6, 8), but it never seems to return to its former status as the central point of the Nephite polity. The geographic shift northward begins in earnest after this point, it appears that Bountiful becomes the chief city of the Nephites, even though Zarahemla was rebuilt.